Charles Sanders Pierce

The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (b. 1839–d. 1914) has had a profound, expansive, and sometimes unrecognized impact on anthropological research and theory. Part of Peirce’s impact has been mediated through the work of philosophers influenced by Peirce’s theory of signs, and who were themselves subsequently taken into anthropological theory. But the impact of Peirce’s semiotic on anthropologists who have interpreted Peirce directly has also been transformative, in particular, in developing a surprisingly transdisciplinary theory of meaning in anthropology. This article documents the role of Peirce’s theory of signs in facilitating a semiotic approach in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology and in providing a framework to critically expand research on visual and material culture, archaeology, trans-species environmental relations, life-systems, and the evolution of language and culture. The transformative impact of Peirce’s semiotic can be understood against the history of the dominant structuralist semiotic theory that guided much 20th- century anthropology that developed from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure called for a science of signs (termed “semiology”) that placed at its center an analysis of the arbitrary linguistic sign (constituted by an ideal binary binding concept and sound-image) and which has value as part of a system of oppositions (langue), held commonly in the minds of speakers as members of a society. A parallel model of language was incorporated into American anthropology by Franz Boas, who argued that language is a conventional system of classification for a society, and the dominant focus became the study of such systems of classification in domains such as botany, zoology, kinship, color, and so on. The structuralist concept of language as a conventional system also became a dominant model of culture in French and British anthropology, in particular through the integration of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s binary analysis of mythic and mental structures, and which was coordinated with the Durkheimian concept of language/culture as a public representation of a society’s values to itself. In contrast, Peircean semiosis does not take the idealist and arbitrary linguistic symbol as the privileged basis of semiotic analysis. Peirce’s semiotic provides a framework for understanding actions relating signs and their material qualities to their interpretations by agents (human and nonhuman) in the habit of making meaning in social-ecological contexts. Peircean semiosis focuses attention on dynamic interpretive processes and their consequences, and on the form, diversity, function, and positionality of signs in chains of actions playing out in time and space to practical, meaningful, productive, or consequential ends.

There is a widespread idea that in grounded theory (GT) research, the researcher has to delay the literature review until the end of the analysis to avoid contamination – a dictum that might turn educational researchers away from GT. Nevertheless, in this article the author (a) problematizes the dictum of delaying a literature review in classic grounded theory, (b) presents arguments for using extant literature in the substantive field within a constructivist grounded theory, and (c) suggests data sensitizing principles in using literature, which are: theoretical agnosticism, theoretical pluralism, theoretical sampling of literature, staying grounded, theoretical playfulness, memoing extant knowledge associations, and constant reflexivity.

CONTENIDO

ARNOLD OOSTRA. La matemática intuicionista y sus conexiones
con el pensamiento de Peirce

FERNANDO ZALAMEA. Faneroscopia, filosofía natural y literatura.
“La Esfinge” en Peirce, Emerson, Poe y Melville

EUGENIO ANDRADE. Las categorías ceno-pitagóricas y la controversia
sobre el origen de las innovaciones evolutivas

ROBERTO PERRY. Desde Peirce: invitación a ampliar
nuestro concepto de signo

CARLOS GARZÓN. ¿Es la verdad la meta de la investigación?
Una lectura pragmaticista para objeciones pragmatistas

DOUGLAS NIÑO. Algunas reflexiones sobre la duda y la creencia

EDISON TORRES Idealismo epistemológico y realismo metafísico
en Charles S. Peirce

Ostensibly a monograph on the drawings of Josef Albers, the reader will find under the heading ‘excursus’ a series of investigations into the concept of constellation in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno, the semiotics of star maps, the rhetorics of geometry and the structure of representation in which Josef Albers’s Structural Constellations are not discussed directly for almost 200 pages. Although it departs from its subject matter, this group of essays may be regarded as tending towards an interpretation of Structural Constellations, as Benjamin would say, ‘returning in a roundabout way to its original object.’
The main themes of the dissertation are addressed to specific objects: texts by Benjamin and Adorno, star maps in the tradition which stretches between Ptolemy’s Almagest and Argelander’s Bonner Durchmustering, geometry lessons, the gossip about Cubism, works and manifestos by Alberti, Dürer, van Doesburg, Lissitsky and Albers. The aim is to broaden the terms of reference and develop more precise interpretative tools for an assessment of Albers’s Structural Constellations, to place these works in a more accurate historical context and provide the basis for a reassessment of some of the products and rhetorics of twentieth century modernism.
The reader should not expect the dissertation to reach a climax with Albers’s Structural Constellations. Albers emerges, even as he dissppears in the elucidation of his works, as a late modernist and practitioner of negative dialectics. His works emerge as a configuration of these dialectics and offer a reflection on the topics and ideas explored in the dissertation.
The historical and theoretical discussion of the metaphorical and graphic praxis of constellation and what I have called the ‘epistemological wish-images’ mediated by geometry is counterbalanced by a companion volume cataloguing some 1,500 drawings by Josef Albers.

The design and construction of architecture rarely go according to plan. Unexpected problems, mistranslations and accidental discoveries can permeate the architectural design process producing surprising results. The ancient Roman architect Vitruvius recounts how Callimachus experienced a similar form of creative inspiration in his serendipitous discovery of a basket, roof tile and acanthus plant as the model for the design of the first Corinthian capital. For the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, Callimachus’ discovery is an example of a sagacious individual who has learned to anticipate aberrations in the creative process claiming, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." Picasso’s friend, Le Corbusier embraced this approach in design by collecting “objets à réaction poètique” (objects of poetic reaction) that he kept in his studio to stimulate the architectural imagination. Perhaps the most famous object in Le Corbusier’s collection was the crab shell he found while roaming a Long Island beach in 1946 and became the structural model for the roof in his 1955-constructed Notre Dame du Haut chapel in Ronchamp, France. Like the basket, roof tile and acanthus plant, the crab shell was not created as a model of architecture, but interpreted as one. These strange tales of architectural evolution are examples that demonstrate what Louis Pasteur described as a “prepared-mind;” a mind actively engaged in a problem prepared to recognize an everyday object or event as inspiration for architecture. As evidenced by a diverse collection of histories of architectural evolution, this chapter explores the mutability between the everyday and the extraordinary through an examination of the cognitive relationship between the quotidian and their translation to architecture. Taking our inspiration from Umberto Eco who once observed how “every story tells a story that has already been told,” this chapter proposes to explore the thread holding these stories together.

Paul Emmons, Marcia Feuerstein, and Carolina Dayer, eds., Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture (Ashgate, 2016)

Intro This is a condensed part of a much larger argument that comes from my forthcoming book which attempts to provide a multi-level conception of noise that brings out its full significance without hypostatizing or fetishizing it I elaborate this within a broadly information-theoretic modal realist metaphysical frame allowing for a description of the processes and structures underlying both the continuities and discontinuities between physical, biological, and cognitive systems, and giving a functionalist computationalist theory of mind as a pragmatically elaborated hierarchically nested non-equilibrium thermodynamic system it is broadly information-theoretic in the sense in which information provides the unifying framework for the analysis of structures, processes and systems at diverse levels of organization modal realism just means that modalities such as actuality, possibility, and necessity, are not just attributions by the mind that can be eliminated by reduction to some foundationalist level of description (composed of individuals such as atoms) but that what really exists are modal relations that hold across and between those diverse levels of structures and processes importantly, even though the description of anything that IS can be fully achieved within this unifying information-theoretic framework (in terms of degrees of randomness or patterns of structural organization), such a description is not adequate even to those complex systems displaying historicity, such as living systems, let alone to the mind (or to the social systems in which mind is necessarily embedded) As Negarestani asserts, mind is a project for which a complete description is not possible even though mind is causally reducible to the physical and chemical processes that compose it, in constraining and coordinating behaviour according to pragmatic proprieties and normative attitudes, it is logically irreducible to its information theoretic description the title of my talk refers to the notion of Autopoiesis developed in second-order cybernetics, where systems are observing rather than merely observed – where reflexivity, recursion, and self-referentiality are intrinsic factors, and systems are analysed in terms of their structural coupling with the environment, with which they form a single circuit with a doubled feedback the maintenance of internal order is no longer due to the robustness of the system to noise but to its resilience to perturbations (this moves from Schrodinger's reproduction of internal consistency by order-from-order to Von Foerster's notion of order-from-noise) so autopoietic systems dynamically self-organise at a number of different scales of observation

Robert Scholes is a respected literary critic and semiotician who, motivated by dissatisfaction with the reigning epistemological assumptions in the field of literary theory, has advocated revamping the discipline of English in significant ways. Scholes's own epistemology and semiotic approach to pedagogy cohere quite well with Polanyi's epistemological work and are, in essence, post-critical. Given that far more students in the American educational system study English than philosophy, a wider embrace of Scholes's pedagogical approach could provide more opportunities than are currently available to give students access to a post-critical formation. Scholes's epistemology, semiotics, and pedagogy are discussed in some detail, and resonances with Polanyi's grand project are highlighted.

n ABSTRACT: This article proposes a revised definition of glossolalia based on the ritual value of incomprehensible speech, which allows for an approach to meaning emergence in non-human languages and the issue of extreme linguistic alterity. The main social and acoustic features associated with glossolalia will be presented through the case study of a Christian charismatic community in Brazil (the Canção Nova), showing us how linguistic evidence supports different notions of Christian personhood and an iconic-based communication between human and divine beings. This article discusses relevant material on the subject since Samarin and provides a fully articulation among Linguistic Ideolology, Phonological Description and Sound Symbolism

Familiarity, so the saying goes, breeds contempt. But, why should familiarity breed such a negative thing as contempt, or other negative orientations? There is something paradoxical about this little folk saying. For, if one is genuinely familiar-possessing the goods of having a high epistemic grade of cognitive or appreciative contact-with some piece of reality, then why should contempt follow on the heels of such genuine epistemic and existential intimacy? At first glance, this seems both bizarre and incongruous. And yet, as anyone who has relegated their most intimate beloved to the status of persona non grata knows, such appreciative failure is the common stock of human experience. This is a 'commonplace' mystery I propose to examine, with a focus on another experiential state parasitic on or constitutive of familiarity: jadedness. In what follows, I will attempt to sketch an initial theory of jadedness, and then expand that theory by attending to Percy's unique philosophical contributions. Percy's contributions suggest, I will argue, that there are at least two types of jadedness-a narrow, domain specific psychological type and a global, existential type-that share structural similarities such as volitional and epistemic inertia, an unsettled loss of meaning, a faulty assumption of epistemic completion or superiority, and a foreclosure of ontological possibilities. I will then show how Percy uniquely integrates these two types of jadedness within a broader framework of what it means to be human (as homo viator, a creature), offering a distinctive and philosophically integrated account of why being jaded involves a fundamental distortion of our humanity. Finally, insofar as jadedness involves failures of humility, I will argue that Percy's philosophical and theological work on our "unsignifiable" uniqueness provides an important critical alternative to prevailing philosophical accounts of humility, and also a unique solution to the problem of being jaded.

In “La méthode de dramatisation et la question ‘Qui?’” (2015), I started exploring how, in the philosophy of William James and Alfred N. Whitehead, theism has been praised for favouring a sense of active personality. In the context of this article, I would like to push this philosophical inquiry in the surrounds of process theology further, by bringing into focus Bergson’s complex understanding of the notion of person. As for James and Whitehead, Bergson’s treatment of the question confers a crucial importance to activity. The evolution of the concept of person throughout his work culminates in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1935). There, he defines what is immediately communicative in a person’s emotional experience as a “call.” How does the problem of personality concern the now of immediate affective experience? And how to understand Bergson’s claim that enthusiasm, as a call, constitutes persons?

In this paper we outline the analytic limitations of action theories and interpretive schemes that conceive of beliefs as explicit mental representations linked to a desire-opportunity folk psychology. Drawing on pragmatism and practice theory, we recast the notion of belief as a species of habit, with pre-reflexive anticipation the primary mechanism accounting for both the formation of beliefs and their causal influence on action. We demonstrate the utility of this approach in three ways: first, by linking it with recent research on the cognitive and motor development of infants; second, by drawing out a typology of belief states that accounts for a range different experiential traits; and third, by applying the new model to reinterpret two belief-based phenomena of broad sociological interest: “irrational” decision-making and religious conversion.

Tourists, Signs, and the City: The Semiotics of Culture in an Urban Landscape, by Michelle M. Metro-Roland Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. x+171pp., US $89.95 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-7546-7809-0

The thesis of the book is that an idea of the ‘tourist prosaic’ is valuable in interpreting how the tourist makes meaning through the activity of being a tourist in an urban environment.

Reconciling Justus Buchler's theory of natural complexes with the Peircean triadic categorial schema, a theory of semiotic radiance is articulated that elaborates the nature of identity with regard to informatic control over objects in a museum collection. The model is deployed in the context of Edwina Taborsky's description of the historical transformation of the cultural syntax of museums. It is argued that the pattern of transformation is not random, but rather follows a specific and recognizable pattern. This pattern is consistent with a general trend in culture, identified by Heidegger, that becomes particularly problematic in its later stages. A theory of the commons derived from Hardt and Negri is articulated that looks to regenerate the space of the museum with regard to its informatic structures in order to renegotiate humanism in terms of a liberation ethic. The rubric of fundamental informatics is borrowed from Toru Nishigaki to describe the inquiry that pursues that end.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a tendência dos estudos que apresentam como
referencial teórico e/ou de análise a Semiótica Peirceana na área do Ensino de Ciências. Para
isto foi realizado um levantamento dos artigos publicados nas edições de 2005, 2007, 2009,
2011 e 2013 do Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Ensino de Ciências (ENPEC). Como categorias de análise foram definidas: (1) A função da Semiótica Peirceana no estudo; (2) Principais elementos conceituais da Semiótica Peirceana empregados no estudo; e (3) A natureza dos estudos. Os resultados indicam a predominância dos estudos empíricos sobre os teóricos e o crescimento do emprego deste referencial teórico nos estudos sobre a análise de signos empregados no ensino de ciências.

" …Por otra parte, todos los partidarios de la ciencia están animados por la feliz esperanza de que basta con que aquella se prosiga lo suficiente para que dé una cierta solución a cada cuestión a la que la apliquen. Uno puede investigar la velocidad de la luz estudiando los pasos de Venus y la aberración de las estrellas; otro, por las oposiciones de Marte y los eclipses de los satélites de Júpiter; un tercero, por el método de Fizeau; un cuarto, por el de Foucault; un quinto, por los movimientos de las curvas de Lissajoux; un sexto, un séptimo, un octavo y un noveno, pueden seguir los diferentes métodos de comparar las medidas de la electricidad estática y dinámica. Al principio pueden obtener resultados diferentes, pero, a medida que cada uno perfecciona su método y sus procedimientos, se encuentra con que los resultados convergen ineludiblemente hacia un centro de destino. Así con toda la investigación científica. Mentes diferentes pueden partir con los más antagónicos puntos de vista, pero el progreso de la investigación, por una fuerza exterior a las mismas, las lleva a la misma y única conclusión. Esta actividad del pensamiento que nos lleva, no donde deseamos, sino a un fin preordenado, es como la operación del destino. Ninguna modificación del punto de vista adoptado, ninguna selección de otros hechos de estudio, ni tampoco ninguna propensión natural de la mente, pueden posibilitar que un hombre escape a la opinión predestinada. Esta enorme esperanza se encarna en el concepto de verdad y realidad. La opinión destinada a que todos los que investigan estén por último de acuerdo en ella es lo que significamos por verdad, y el objeto representado en esta opinión es lo real. Esta es la manera cómo explicaría yo la realidad " Charles Sanders Peirce

At the nexus between audio-visual production and theoretical research, this article is based on the
experience of producing a documentary on the history of a cement plant in Colombia: "La Siberia". The
tensions between the narratives constructed in the documentary and the immensity of the discarded
archives from the plant drive a theoretical quest to respond to its own iconoclast and the post-structuralist
critique of history. This brought us to the formulation of the concept of "twilight representation",
defined as representation that is transparent about its own limitations. I put this concept to the test
through the medium of documentary film, talking specifically about the making of "La Siberia", and
suggest its relevance in other projects that attempt to represent the past or history through film. I suggest that this theory drives us towards the formulation of a new artistic project. The research process,
and the dialogue between theory and practice, is interpreted using the model of "abduction" proposed
by Charles Sanders Peirce.

Using a Peircean theory of meaning, agency may be theorized in terms of flexibility and accountability, on the one hand, and knowledge and power, on the other. In this theory, residential agency, which is closest to notions such as " power " and " choice, " is the degree to which one can control the expression of a sign, compose a sign-object relation, and commit to an interpretant of this sign-object relation. Representational agency, which is closest to notions such as " knowledge " and " consciousness , " is the degree to which one can thematize a process, characterize a feature of this theme, and reason with this theme-character relation. Agency, as a kind of social and semiotic facility, is thereby theorized as multidimensional, graduated, and distributed. This theory allows one to analyze, as concomitant phenomena, the longue durée processes that underlie relatively perduring institutions and the real-time practices that support relatively fleeting interactions. Finally, it highlights the theoretical and empirical terrain shared by linguistic anthropology, science and technology studies, political economy, and critical theory.

Semiotic resaerch on five photography made from Tina Modotti in the post-revolutionary Mexico of '20. Deeping on photography history and theory, and on the role of photography and art for the Revolution.

“Sempre, quando le parole “arte” e “artistico” vengono applicate al mio lavoro fotografico, io mi sento in disaccordo. Questo è dovuto sicuramente al cattivo uso e abuso che viene fatto di questi termini.
Mi considero una fotografa, niente più"

Tina Modotti, "On photography"; 1929

Formal causality has, in large part, been eschewed by both the philosophic and scientific communities alike.  David Hume in particular levied an assault against any form of causality other than material cause.  But formal cause is as viable a notion as material cause, and one that is of vital importance in both philosophy and science.  By re-assessing Aristotle’s notion of formal causality, and interweaving it with inspirations from such diverse disciplines as Anthropology, Semiotics, and Communication Studies the notion of formal cause can be restored to its rightful place, along side material cause, as a fundamental principle of scientific and philosophical methods alike.

Ces cinq pages, qui font une suite à la notice sur 'L'Arbitraire du signe', exposent d'abord la position d'un penseur antique, Sextus Empiricus, pour montrer par un court extrait « comment il s'y prend » pour traiter la question du signe ; puis nous parlerons de Zénon, le fondateur du stoïcisme ; ensuite de l'éloge qu'Umberto Eco fit de la position de Charles Sanders Pierce. Nous terminerons en examinant sous cet angle la question des « mots nouveaux ».

La obra del filósofo norteamericano John Dewey (1859-1952) es sistemática en la teoría y, en vida del propio Dewey, aspiraría a ser también sistemática en la práctica. En la práctica, un modo de tratar la profunda complejidad de la filosofía es atender a la antigua reciprocidad entre las palabras y las acciones, una práctica ausente o poco común en la continuidad que demanda naturalmente la vida humana, sobre todo en la actualidad. Tanto la naturaleza como la cultura serían un pretexto para la experiencia que, en ese sentido, podría significar todo o nada. Desde la perspectiva pragmatista de Dewey, la vida práctica de las ideas hace literalmente referencia a una realidad concreta que la profesora Calcaterra ha puesto de manifiesto paralelamente en relación con la biografía de Dewey en su libro 'Idee concrete. Percorsi nella filosofia di John Dewey' (que se puede traducir por 'Ideas concretas. Recorridos en la filosofía de John Dewey').

Within Christian theology, the doctrine of the economic Trinity concerns the relation between the Triune God and living creatures like human beings. Roughly speaking, the orthodox view is that, though no Trinitarian person acts without the other two, God the Father creates, God the Son redeems, and God the Holy Spirit sanctifies. Instead of focusing upon the truth or falsity of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the present essay attempts to make sense of this doctrine through an appeal to the anthropological side of the divine-human relationship. Specifically, I will appeal to the process of symbolic interpretation by which human beings relate themselves to Ultimate Reality, arguing that the differentiated roles of the Trinitarian persons can be understood as reflections of the triadic relationship that defines the process of semiosis or sign-interpretation. 

This essay consists of three sections. Section 1 explains Charles Sanders Peirce's conception of semiosis as a process constituted by an irreducibly triadic relation between three relata: (1) a sign that represents, (2) an object that is represented, and (3) an interpretant that interprets the object on the basis of the sign. Section 2 demonstrates, through extensive quotations from the New Testament and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), that the relation posited between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit corresponds quite closely with the relation between object, sign, and interpretant, respectively, in semiosis. Finally, section 3 considers two alternative explanations of this surprising correlation: Andrew Robinson's vestigia Trinitatis explanation and a naturalistic alternative that construes the doctrine of the Trinity as a reflection of the processes of symbolic semiosis that are central to all human religions.

The opening chapter to 'Animal Neopragmatism: From Welfare to Rights' (Palgrave Macmillan 2019). I explain the theoretical and practical motivations for neopragmatism in animal ethics, and sketch the pragmatist critique of traditional animal right theory. I introduce the key concepts of animal neopragmatism: relational hedonism and expressivism.

Much have been done in a long process of formulation of the modern thought towards what comes to be renown as Sign, from the first sight of a thing involved with a mystical meaning deriving from the deepest comprehension among the religious men from the archaic cultures, to the most complex and evolved modern science themata that guides the eyes and the intentions underlining every step in human discovery process. The discourse is being constantly reformatted to fit the spectacle of the new discoveries, discourse that was gradually transformed from lines in plain texts into technical images and their power of representation of a fictitious world, but essentially on the very basis, something remains untouched and still reserves its mystical value, having crossed the enlightenment process and acquiring a new configuration. In this paper, a brief historical process of the Sign will be drawn in the attempt to demonstrate that there are various mystical elements from the scholastic period that are still present on the modern mode of thinking and comprehending of a Sign, that can drive its conclusion into something transcendentally connected, in between humans and gods, knowledge and deities, the logic and the cosmos. The Signs studies, thus, remain in a certain aspect of obscurity.

“Peirce’s ideas about signs share a common conceptual space with Dignāga and other Indian logicians. Therefore, it seems reasonable to claim that the ancient and medieval Indian logicians who based their logic on the nature of signs understood the essence of logic primarily as what in the western tradition came to be called as semiotics.”(Sarukkai,  2008:297)

Аннотация: В статье осуществлен семиотический анализ процессов социального конструирования. В качестве концептуального инструментария, позволяющего раскрыть семиотические механизмы сборки субъекта, предлагается теория интерпретант Ч.С. Пирса. Раскрыт механизм формирования семиотического Я эксплицированный в последовательности трех этапов (трех видах интерпретант) познавательной деятельности активного субъекта.
Abstract: The article presents a semiotic analysis of social construction processes. Charles Pierce’s interpretant theory is seen as a conceptual instrument that helps to uncover semiotic mechanisms of subject’s assembly. The article reveals the mechanism of the semiotic “self” formation which is explicated in the sequence of three stages
(three kinds of interpretants) of subject’s cognitive activity.
Ключевые слова: знак, семиозис, коммуникации, интерпретанта, активный субъект, социальный конструкционизм, познавательная деятельность, семиотическое «Я».
Keywords: sign, semiosis, communication, interpretant, an active subject, social constructionism, cognitive activity, the semiotic “self”.

The advertising discourse has an impact on your interpretant that can overcome the simple barrier of an ad displayed on media. Some of that ads, especially television spots, transform their signs into universal symbologies, which now adhere to the concept of certain products or product categories. Observing the features of the main signs present in the discourse of the movie “first bra” by the lingerie company Valisère, we intend to validate the transformation of the bra object from the evident index of discovery of adult femininity.

Entre la suma de particularidades hacia un todo y un método que las diriga, el pragmatismo ha sido muy firme en proclamar que la inteligencia no es mas que un instrumento de utilidad y cual, mas allá de la lógica formal, existe unas variables que no han sido consideradas como el sentimiento de afección, emoción, la acción o volición, interés del momento, la vida misma y su vitalismo, en suma la intuición sensible. Se le acusa a esta tendencia filosofíca de que por su concepto de lógica abductiva y 'preeminencia del cuerpo elimina la posibilidad de una verdad objetiva por parte de la cognición racional y de esta forma separa la razón de la realidad objetiva cual esta reflejada en ella'. El propósito de esta investigación es tanto argumentar que la lógica abductiva del pragmatismo si puede abrirse hacia el conocimiento científico, partiendo del cuerpo; también estaremos dialogando una posible interacción con esta concepción con la metáfora de caminos de Nietzsche y el eterno retorno como un en-si del donde se es afectado y a la vez se actúa, donde la razón es un producto de la experiencia del cuerpo y continuamente es modificada por ella y así creando variedades de conciencias. Es 'someter aprueba los caminos mismos. Un ensayar y un preguntar' a su vez.

Utilizaremos fragmentos escogidos de La Gaya Ciencia, Así Hablo Zarathustra, y Mas Allá Del Bien Y El Mal. Estudios de lógica de William James y C.S. Pierce sobre la inducción y la abducción. Tendremos en mente estudios probabilidad como los comentarios de Reichenbach y Carnap. También los ensayos de Danto sobre Nietzsche.

Palabras claves: Abduccion, Caminos, Cuerpo, Eterno Retorno, Realidades, Probabilidad.

Before the total cutoff of a household for unpaid electrical bills, and in anticipation of the violence it might precipitate, national power utility inspectors in Dar es Salaam have recourse to a gradient of ‘soft’ disconnections designed to signal good faith and encourage repayment. Drawing on a mixture of semiotics and exchange theory, this article argues that such soft disconnections may be understood as moments when the shared grounds of the household-utility relation—both the physical power network and social commitments it embodies—become figured, modified, and ultimately preserved in the face of urban postcolonial strain. Whereas semiosis is often thought of as a kind of infrastructural bridge that links sign to interpretant (or object to sign), the inspectors’ reflexively phatic signaling of common grounds highlights the thoroughly semiotic nature of infrastructure itself. More generally, the very presumption and preservation of shared grounds is a salutary alternative to the anti-relational violence and extinction that characterizes much of the contemporary world.

Drawing on the application of C. S. Peirce’s notion of indexicality,
this paper argues that iterative imaging technologies modulate the manner in which moving images represent reality and determine how they are traced back to that referent. Rather than subscribing to the canonical divergence between analogue and digital technologies, the paper argues that current moving image theories do not sufficiently acknowledge the granularity of technology when describing indexical relationships between moving images and the reality they represent. Despite a shared use of analogue technologies, film’s technique of fixing a full frame of movement to a momentarily static strip of light-sensitive celluloid or Mylar is profoundly different from analogue video’s parsing of the image frame to its constituent parts and then recording this signal to continuously moving tape or broadcasting the resulting images. These are particularities of technique and technology, not
easily ranked in terms of verisimilitude. The paper concludes that despite a widely accepted indexical analogue/digital divide, the indexical status of analogue video is no different to that of digital video images because both consist of discrete and non-continuous picture elements.

The goal of Giancarlo Zanet’s paper is to illustrate the historical and theoretical influence of Peirce and Lewis on Quine, particularly in terms of the pragmatist outlook imbued by the former two philosophers. Moreover, Zanet suggests that this pragmatist outlook is rooted in Kant, if only in the fundamental respect that Kant drew a clear distinction between mind and content, a distinction that Zanet periodically refers to as “mind-world relationship” (Zanet 1), or, after Davidson in his famous attack on Quine’s “third dogma” in “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974), a “scheme-content relationship” (Zanet 1, 3). However, unlike Kant, Zanet explains, Peirce, Lewis and Quine, all claimed—for pragmatic reasons—that the conceptual scheme is not fixed. Rather, it may vary, depending on, in the words of Lewis, “intellectual consistency,” “economy,” “completeness of comprehension,” “simplicity of interpretation” (MWO, QTD Z 7).  Moreover, Zanet suggests, this scheme-content distinction, when pragmatically construed, enabled Quine to view his empiricism as being compatible with what Zanet identifies as “externalism,” or in other words, what Zanet seems to mean by an “anti-subjective” approach to epistemology (Zanet, 3).  As such, Zanet claims, Quine may avoid the epistemological consequence of what Davidson characterizes as the “third dogma,” namely, Quine need not appeal to “sensory stimulation as the ultimate source for knowledge [and thus, Quine may avoid being] … subjective and Cartesian.” (Zanet, 8). Instead, Zanet claims that Quine—building on the “social conception of mind, knowledge and language inherited … from Peirce and C.I. Lewis” (Zanet, 8)—thought that “external” observation sentences count as “evidence.”